1. Field of the Invention
Portable emergency fire fighting, rescue and evacuation elevator particularly suitable for high rise buildings of a height beyond the reach of conventional fire department apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A serious safety problem exists to occupants of today's sky scrapers and high rise apartment buildings, the upper floors of which cannot be reached by existing extension ladders of fire departments, as evidenced by newspaper articles of fire tragedies to people trapped in upper stories of such buildings. Attempts using elevator type structures have been made in the past to solve the problem of evacuating people from buildings under emergency conditions, but such solution attempts have been generally unsatisfactory particularly where substantial numbers of people must be evacuated quickly. For example, one such recent solution attempt is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,831,711. It provides for permanent emplacement of vertical tubular members on the outside walls of the building and adapted to carry one individual at a time on a small exposed platform moving vertically in a slot in the tubular member. Such evacuation structure is inadequate for modern high rise buildings for several reasons. One reason for its inadequacy is that its low rate of people evacuating capability makes it particularly inadequate under emergency conditions such as in rapidly spreading fires where substantial numbers of people must be evacuated quickly. Another undesirable characteristic of such evacuation structure is its requirement of permanent disfiguring emplacement of vertical tubular channel members on the outside walls of the building. Also a further undesirable characteristic of such structure is its requirement for precarious movement of persons to reach the personnel carrier of the device from an open window or even from the roof of the building.
Other earlier unsatisfactory attempts at solving the problem of emergency evacuation of people from buildings with elevator type structures are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 121,796; 473,572 and 709,519. The U.S. Pat. No. 121,796 structure succeeds in avoiding the need for permanent exterior emplacements, but has the serious limitations of evacuating a single individual at a time as well as the usurpation of a substantial amount of valuable interior building space for the indefinitely long periods between evacuation emergencies. U.S. Pat. No. 473,572 similarly has the undesirable characteristic of requiring permanent vertical tubular members fixed to the outside walls of the building as well as limiting evacuation to a single individual at a time, resulting in too low a rate of evacuation for practical use in emergency conditions, and the undesirable requirement of a person's precarious movement from a window to reach the escape vehicle which is carried in a slot in the tubular member. While the structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 709,519 provides a safer and more convenient arrangement for an individual to reach the evacuation vehicle from a window, it has the disadvantage of similarly requiring permanent disfiguring support and guide members at the outside walls of the building and an inherent structural character not suitable for high rise buildings.